IBM Academic Initiative Helps Plug Skill Gaps
IBM announced that 150 colleges and universities worldwideoffer educational resources on the IBM eServer zSeries; mainframe through its academic initiative launched in 2003.
The program provides students and professors with hands-on access to the mainframe, curriculum, industry experts and training for students and faculty. The goal is to help students in developing practical mainframe skills to find jobs quickly upon graduation and to help businesses replace refiring mainframe experts. IBM has pledged to work with schools to reach a target of 20,000 mainframe literate professionals in the market by 2010. To meet this goal, IBM hopes to double the number of schools involved within 2005.
“Through this program, computer science programs around the world are training thousands of students on highly marketable mainframe skills based on the platform’s unmatched features and support of open standards like Linux and Java,” said Mike Bliss, director of IBM eServer zSeries technical support and marketing.
David Douglas, professor at the University of Arkansas Walton School of Business, teaches two courses around the mainframe as part of a Bachelor of Science in information systems. Walton Business School recently announced that this year it would gain access to a mainframe, IBM software, courseware, customized training and development, benefits valued at about $7 million.
“Even though mainframes hold most of the world’s data, today’s computer science students grew up with distributed systems and even consider older UNIX systems to be legacy platforms,” said Douglas. “By teaming with IBM to offer course materials and hands-on access to the mainframe, students are beginning to realize that although madnframes are a more complex technology, most of the features they’ve learned about in the distributed environment actually originated on the mainframe. It’s an innovative platform with a great future.”
The training is paying off for students. Joshua Smith, 24, credits an operating systems class within the program taken at Malone College with helping him land a programmer position at an Ohio-based manufacturer.
“Before taking the operating systems class on zSeries, I thought the mainframe was on its way out. The more I learned, the more I realized the value of working on hardware that sets the standard in security, scalability and uptime,” Smith explains.
The program reaches students globally:
* In Europe, IBM recently signed Adam Mickiewicz University to join the initiative. Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, is the 150th participant of the program with more than 20 students enrolled in its postgraduate computer science degree. IBM is training faculty members with handson mainframe education. This university joins 24 other institutions in 16 countries around Europe that are pursuing education through the initiative.
* In China, IBM donated mainframe systems and software to seven universities, including Huazhong University of Science and Technology, South China University of Technology and Poking University. IBM aims to have the program lead to 10,000 new mainframe literate professionals in China.
* In Australia, 50 students are currently enrolled in an IT degree program developed jointly by Global Online Learning and Griffith University to produce professionals.
* In the United States and Canada, an IBM mainframe hub housed through the program at Marist College in Poughkeepsie can be accessed remotely by schools in the United States and overseas. This allows students hands-on experience of working with the mainframe as part of their computer science degrees.
* In Latin America, University of Campirias in Sao Paolo, Brazil, is establishing a mainframe hub running Linux. This deployment will give students, partner universities and research institutes access via the Internet to an IBM server, allowing them to develop their teaching and research projects without having to own large-scale equipment.
Copyright Westfair Communications Aug 08, 2005